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Movie Metropolis (309 KP) rated Run All Night (2015) in Movies

Jun 11, 2019

Run All Night (2015)

2015 | Mystery

7.3

(8 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Neeson at his gritty best

It’s fair to say Liam Neeson has picked some decidedly dodgy acting jobs since his rise to become an A-list Hollywood action hero. From a disappointing turn in the most recent A Team movie to the laughably bad Taken 3, he seems to have been turned from fan favourite to the butt of so many jokes.

After January’s poorly received Taken 3, Neeson returns to give the genre another go in Run All Night, but does Jaume Collet-Serra’s intriguing direction return him to the top of the food chain?

Run All Night follows the story of Neeson’s Jimmy Conlon as he does his best to keep his son Michael, played by Joel Kinnaman, away from the deadly clutches of Sean Maguire, a brutal underworld gangster portrayed by Ed Harris, after the murder of Sean’s son Danny over the course of 16 hours.

What ensues is a formulaic action thriller featuring by-the-numbers set pieces that are interspersed with some inspiring cinematography and all the actors at the top of their game.

Neeson’s Jimmy is an alcoholic former hit man, previously employed by Maguire, who has decided to move away from his shady past and become a more rounded individual. His interactions with Ed Harris’ brilliant Sean are excellent and the pair have genuine chemistry – it’s just a shame that their backstory isn’t built on a little more.

As the audience follows Jimmy and Michael evading the police, mobsters and professional hired killers, the film traces their backstory, almost using the action-packed set pieces as checkpoints for a bit more history and from a genre that rarely utilises character development, this is a welcome addition.

The cinematography is truly stunning. The sweeping shots of New York City are inspired and the use of tracking and aerial panning instead of simply fading between scenes stylises the film like no other action movie from the last few years.

There is an air of The Taking of Pelham 123 in Serra’s direction, and of course the similarities to Neeson’s Taken and Serra’s very own Non-Stop that also starred the Irish actor are obvious.

Unfortunately, all these comparisons mean that Run All Night isn’t particularly original in premise despite its unique direction. We’ve seen it all before, we saw Neeson running about and shooting bad guys in Taken, Taken 2 and Taken 3. We saw him try to get the bottom of a serious problem in Non-Stop and we saw him take on the role of a troubled alcoholic in The Grey.

Yes, after Taken 3, Run All Night showcases Neeson at his gritty best, but it’s in Ed Harris that we find the most intriguing

character and he puts everything into Sean Maguire – despite his more than familiar name.

Thankfully, Serra and the production crew steered away from creating a film that would please the masses and opted for an often brutal, yet strangely warming action thriller – along the way avoiding the pitfalls of some of Neeson’s previous efforts.

Overall, Run All Night isn’t the disaster it could have been and shows what everyone’s favourite Irish actor is capable of when given the right material to work with. Ed Harris is also on point and Jaume Collet-Serra’s direction goes above and beyond what the genre asks for.

Only an underwhelming final act and a highly unoriginal story stop it from becoming the film it so deeply wanted to be.

https://moviemetropolis.net/2015/03/15/neeson-at-his-gritty-best-run-all-night-review/

Kudos

Eddie's Bastard

William Kowalski

(0 Ratings) Rate It

Book

In this rich, deeply resonant literary debut, twenty-eight-year-old William Kowalski explores the...

fiction literary fiction contemporary American

Acanthea Grimscythe (300 KP) rated Nails (2017) in Movies

May 12, 2018

Nails (2017)

2017 | Horror

4.0

(1 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Contains spoilers, click to show

If you’re looking for a film packed with clichés and continuity issues, I recommend Nails – an Irish film currently available on Netflix. I ended up watching it yesterday with my sister-in-law and while it isn’t absolutely awful, it was definitely something I won’t be watching again.

The movie begins with a bam, jumping immediately into what can be read in the above synopsis. There’s not much of a build up and the characters are awfully flat. In fact, we don’t really get much of a chance to learn anything about them other than that Dana Milgrom, the main character, is helpless and dismissed by her healthcare professionals, and Steve Milgrom is a cheating asshole (because hey, what movie does that not happen in?). There’s also a daughter, and while she plays a major role toward the end of the film, she’s fairly minor otherwise.

What bothers me most about Nails isn’t its dry characters, though. The film is riddled with continuity errors. For instance, Dana is struck by a car and hits the pavement, but her face appears to have been severely burnt after the fact. Also Dana’s broken arm somehow heals faster than her face. Similarly, her stitches don’t lighten up or begin to heal. Later, there’s a scene where she’s tossed haphazardly over a wheelchair, then magically has repositioned herself.

As for clichés, here’s a list of them:

-Creepy scenes accompanied with ear shattering music
-Borderline creeper psychiatrist
-Eric Nilsson is an “angel of mercy” that killed five children then, surprise, killed himself in the same room Dana just happens to be stuck in.
-Hospital has a prior nefarious history and record of poor choices
Steve’s affair
-The dismissal of Dana’s concerns as being a mental issue (though this does have some importance when you consider the current mental health battles, it is hugely overplayed in horror movies without actually addressing the issue itself)

This is just a short compilation of issues I found with the movie. It’s one saving grace really is the type of monster being radically different from what you usually see. I felt Nails, the entity itself, was unique enough to save this movie from a one skull rating. Nonetheless, it could have been a lot better.